47. Sales of family property.—The Ifugao has a very peculiar system of buying and selling in connection with family property, by which, paradoxical as it may sound, a man has to pay for an article almost twice its price. In order to complete the purchase of a rice field, there are “extras” almost without number, to be paid, each extra bearing as its metaphorical name, the name of some act of rice-field cultivation or of a feature of the trade itself. So far as has yet been ascertained, there is no myth or story to explain how this peculiar idiosyncracy originated.
The price is divided into ten parts, each part being represented by a runo stick or a notch cut in a stick, or by knots in a string. In the Banaue district, these sticks are kept for generations as records of the sale. The first two sticks are called budut, and represent the payment down. They are the heaviest payments, not necessarily made on the day of the transfer, but at a set time. The eight others represent some standard in the Ifugao’s system of barter, and are called gatang, or price. They are paid at some indefinite time in the future. Possession of the field is given after the first payment. In order to make the sticks conform to the standards of barter, it is sometimes necessary to represent one payment by two sticks.
Fee of witnesses and agent. This fee is called lukbu, or lagbu (in Benaue dialect). The principal witnesses are preferably the distant kin of the seller, and the agent or agents who effected the sale. The names of the different sticks, knots, or notches are translated literally in the tables diagraming the transactions in purchasing fields.
These fees are paid and the presents made to the kin of the seller at a feast called ibuy. This feast is performed whenever the purchase price of the field has been paid. The kin of buyer and seller meet in the purchaser’s house.
A. Transactions in the Purchase of a Field in the Kiangan Area
I. Payments on the property
| Paid down at time purchase is consummated, or soonafter: | ||
| Name of transaction and meaning | Article transferred | Value |
| Budut, or tandong | 1 pig | ₱20.00 |
| Budut, or tandong | 1 pig | 15.00 |
| Additional instalments (gatang) paidirregularly: | ||
| Gatang | 1 death blanket | 8.00 |
| Nunokóp (two at a time) | 1 death blanket | 8.00 |
| Nunokóp (two at a time) | 1 pig | 20.00 |
| Gatang | 1 pig | 8.00 |
| Gatang | 1 pig | 8.00 |
| Total | ₱87.00 | |
II. Fees (lukbu) of the principal witnesses
| Name of transaction and meaning | Article transferred | Value |
| Bobod (the tying) | 1 pig | ₱10.00 |
| Page (rice) | 1 small pig | 6.00 |
| Lanad (commission of the go-between) | 5.00 | |
| Pugug (finished) | 4.00 | |
| Gogod (cut) | 3.00 | |
| Kinta (left over) | 1.00 | |
| Total | ₱29.00 |